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Saturday, July 4, 2009

Yesterday was one of those "shut up and run" days. I woke up tired. I wanted to be out running by 7:30 a.m., before the heat set in, but at 8:30 a.m. I was still languishing on the couch with my coffee.

Ken: "Having trouble getting motivated?"

Me: "No shit. I'm tired. My stomach is bubbly."

Ken: "What did you have for breakfast?"

Me: "A pop tart."

Ken: "Well there's the problem. You deserve the bubbles."

Me: "But it's the new pop tart with 20% of your daily value of fiber! 10% vitamin A! 10% Thiamin! Your daily dose of corn syrup solids, glycerin and hydrogenated cottonseed oil!" (I do think it's really funny how the marketers try to make really unhealthy food seem healthy. Like Velveeta: Now with more calcium. Or Crisco: Smooth new taste! You can eat it by spoonfuls right from the can!).

Ken: "You're a freak. Shut up. Run."

And run I did. It was hot. I was tired. I pulled out some 8.0/mm pace miles. I wanted to be done. But in the last couple of miles, I saw the most amazing (or disturbing) thing.

Here come two runners towards me. One is probably in his forties, the other in his eighties. Yes, I said eighties. The forty-ish guy is slightly ahead of the eighty-ish guy. I look over to them as they pass to give my standard good morning wave. I notice that the eighty-ish guy is holding a rope pulled by the forty-ish guy. My immediate thought was, "Well, if some eighty year old is old, tired and dedicated enough to be pulled on a rope, there really are NO excuses to not be out here running." I mean really!

So I tell this story at dinner last night. I was relaying it as an inspirational anecdote. Everyone at the table thought the "geriatric rope pulling" was some sort of golden-ager abuse. Either that or there was some crazy S & M stuff involved. Did I mention the forty-ish guy had a whip? Just kidding.

I still think it is eff'ing awesome that eighty-ish guy was out there.

So as if my senior citizen encounter wasn't enough to brighten my day, I come home to see my 11 year old son, Sam, looking like this:

It just made me smile. Robe with no shirt on. Coffee. Morning paper. He's either going to be a professor or Hugh Hefner one day.

The rope thing... hmmm. Mostly it's inspiring. I never liked to see mother's with their toddler's on leases at amusement parks. My problem. If it makes their life easier and they don't use it for a whip. Who am I to judge? I love the 80 year old. We all know I do it for the old people. Love Sam. Tell him to call me!

I could be totally wrong on this, but I think the point of the rope was for the 40-ish guy to work on his running form. If you're pulling something heavy when you run, you have to strain a bit forward, and it changes your running posture. The result is that you run more on the balls of your feet (like in hill training) and put less pressure on your heels. There was something about this in "Born to Run"; I had never heard of it before, and I've certainly never seen it!

I am reading your blog from the beginning. Well done. I thought someone would have mentioned this already, but I guess not. Don't blind runners use a guide and rope? Could the older runner have been blind?